Portrait of Exploitation

PORTRAIT OF EXPLOITATION

The real face of prostitution PRISM 2007

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athleen Mitchell still wonders what happened to Carrie.

Carrie (not her real name) was only 18 years old when she appeared at the shelter where Mitchell worked. Her two children, fathered by the pimp who had put her on the street when she was only 12, had been taken by the pimp’s sister. While other girls her age were attending their senior proms and planning for college, Carrie was just trying to survive.

When the other women at the shelter learned of Carrie’s history—that her pimp targeted 12- and 13-year-old girls, dropping them when they got “too old” at 16 or 17—they began to withdraw from her. Concerned that Carrie might attempt to draw their own daughters into prostitution, the women tried to keep their children from coming into contact with her.

One night Kathleen Mitchell arrived at work to discover that Carrie was gone. The girl had, however, left a note for Mitchell, one of the few who had shown her kindness. She wrote about her reasons for leaving and then concluded, “I don’t think anyone here understands what it feels like to be a disposable person.”

A former prostitute herself, Mitchell has been working in Arizona with women and girls victimized by prostitution since 1989. While in jail in the late 1980s, she began to organize a support group for women looking for a way out of prostitution, because, she says, she needed that support.

After her release, she was able to make a complete break with her past and ultimately went back to school to earn certificates in chemical dependency studies.

The product of her labors, a ministry called DIGNITY that operates under the auspices of Catholic Charities, offers long-term and transitional housing to formerly prostituted women, providing them with the support, education, and tools they need to move out of the miasma of their life in

prostitution. DIGNITY touches the lives of more than 900 women and children each year.

Like Mitchell, women from all over the world who were once caught up in the commercial sex industry are reaching out to give a hand up to people most of society views as worthless—victimized pawns in a global web of sexual servitude. Armed only with the weapons of hope and love as they fight an enemy of legionary magnitude, these women on the front lines are offering a new future to those whose lives have been shattered by prostitution.

The real face of prostitution

Stereotypes about prostitutes and the world of prostitution are both abundant and contradictory—prostitutes are human trash, and they deserve what happens to them, for example, or prostitutes are canny businesswomen who bring in good money by providing a service that men are all too willing to pay for. Each of these distinct portrayals serves to accomplish the same purpose: They hold prostituted persons at arm’s length, proving primarily that they are “not us.” Movies like Pretty Women show the proverbial prostitute “with a heart of gold,” a lovely outsider with a pure heart who can be saved

by Richard Gere or some other knight in shining armor.

The reality, however, is much more complex—and ugly.

The vast majority of prostituted women (and men) have serious problems with substance abuse, mental illness, or both.

A growing number of prostituted persons are recruited at increasingly younger ages, brainwashed and psychologically broken down in order to coerce them to conform to the will of a pimp.

According to Joe Parker at the Lola Greene Baldwin Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to working with survivors of prostitution, war, and domestic violence, “The sex industry is ultimately about power.This is best demonstrated by the care which the industry takes to ensure that those it

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uses are powerless. The predators are neither irrational nor stupid.They watch carefully for a kind of ‘victim profile,’ and avoid anyone who may be uncontrollable or dangerous. They focus on young people coming out of families that are abusive, disorganized, or non-existent” (as quoted on the Prostitution Research and Education website at prostitutionresearch.com).

Linda Burkle, who works with Wellspring, a Salvation Army ministry targeted toward women and girls coming out of prostitution in Omaha, Neb., estimates that 99 percent of the women she works with have a substance abuse issue which then fuels the continuation of prostitution in order to buy drugs. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle, says Burkle. “Often women get involved in prostitution because of being seduced or enticed into it by a smooth-talking pimp who gets them hooked on drugs. Once they’re addicted, they have to keep prostituting to feed the addiction. We also see a very high occurrence of serious and persistent mental health issues.

The mental health and substance abuse issues together—these are a recipe for disaster.”

Moreover, DIGNITY’s Mitchell insists that the average age of prostitutes is lowering each year. The average age is now around 15, and Mitchell says she’s seen prostituted children as young as 10. In their 1996 report Prostitution of Children, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated that over 100,000 children are currently involved in prostitution in the United States.

Although nationwide statistics indicate that 85 percent of those involved in prostitution were sexually abused as children,

in Mitchell’s experience the numbers are even higher: around 96 percent. The abuse they suffered as children makes them exceedingly vulnerable to predatory pimps, who feed on the abuse victim’s sense of guilt and worthlessness in order to coerce and manipulate her.

Social norms are an unwitting aid in subjugating those trapped in prostitution. Joe Parker writes, “The larger society provides pimps with a very powerful weapon. It makes prostitution an identity, not an occupation. Once you have taken money for sex, you are a prostitute. Society does not allow an expiration date on that identity, nor a way to be publicly accepted as something else…Many people prefer to view prostitution as a ‘lifestyle choice’ or even an ‘addiction’ to a lifestyle. They think most people in the sex industry are there to support their drug habits, when actually the drugs are used to cope with what is happening to their lives. Society assumes that nothing can be done to help them, so there is no need to try. The pimps count on it.”

As for prostitution’s harvest, Parker says, “The health effects of prostitution are devastating. Prostitution, especially in childhood, is at least as effective as war in producing posttraumatic stress disorder. Survivors usually have some combination of depression, anxiety, and dissociative disorders.

Brain damage, psychosis, and suicide are common. Long-term psychiatric disability, serious medical illness, and the effects of accumulating injuries shorten lives.”

Loving the whole person: A comprehensive approach

Because there are so many ways in which prostitution conspires to ensnare people and consume lives, no single approach will succeed in combating its existence or minimizing its toll.

Certainly laws which strengthen the penalties against sex traffickers, pimps, and those who solicit prostitutes are a necessary part of the equation—but just a small part.

Incarcerating prostituted children in juvenile detention centers and jails in many cases prevents them from getting the therapy, drug treatment, or education they need in order to have a viable alternative to prostitution.

Wellspring’s Linda Burkle emphasizes the need for an approach that takes into account the entire story and circumstance of each person who is a survivor of sexual exploitation.

Wellspring has taken this necessity to heart and, instead of waiting for potential clients to come to them, their staff assertively go in search of those who have been involved in prostitution and who need their help. Jails are a primary target.

“We do a lot of outreach in the jails,” Burkle says, “including

“For the vast majority of the world’s prostituted women, prostitution is the experience of being hunted, dominated, harassed, assaulted, and battered...In prostitution, demand creates supply. Because men want to buy sex, prostitution is assumed to be inevitable, therefore ‘normal.’ ... Prostitution must be exposed for what it really is: a particularly lethal form of male violence against women. The focus on research, prevention, and law enforcement in the next decade must be on the demand side of prostitution.”

From “Prostitution: A critical review of the medical and social sciences literature” by Melissa Farley and Vanessa Kelly in Women & Criminal Justice (2000,Vol. 11), available at ProstitutionResearch.com.

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classes in the jails on life coping. We have mental health therapists and dual diagnosis people. We also do case management; we coordinate services for them; we go with them to appointments. We do whatever it takes. It’s very difficult to leave the lifestyle, because it’s a culture. They’re not accustomed to keeping appointments, don’t have a social security card, any of the things that you need to function in society.

They haven’t developed a legitimate entrée into regular societal institutions. That’s why Wellspring is a comprehensive program involving advocacy, education, therapy, drug treat-

ment, and whatever else it takes.”

Because those emerging from prostitution often have attendant challenges, such as drug addiction, mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, or other health problems, trying to help the whole person can be a daunting task. Relapse is likely, Burkle notes, but she’s careful to add, “We never say, ‘That’s it, you’ve had your three chances, we’re done with you.’”

Kathleen Mitchell says that upon release from jail a prostituted person’s first instinct is to throw herself into involvement with friends and family, to try and “make up”

Gifts of Healing Educational and outreach resources for making a difference in the lives of prostituted persons DIGNITY, operating under the auspices of Catholic Charities (catholiccharitiesaz.org), is a comprehensive diversion and rehabilitation program that helps women and girls involved in prostitution gain the skills, support, and education they need to make a successful break from prostitution.

Emmaus Ministries (streets.org) is a Chicago-based outreach to men caught up in prostitution.

Veronica’s Voice (veronicasvoice.org) in Kansas City, named after a woman murdered in prostitution, is funded by Catholic Charities. Their first Annual Walk for the Sexually Exploited of America, with the theme “Prostitution Is Violence Against Women!”, will take place on September 22, 2007.

The Salvation Army (salvationarmyusa.org/trafficking) and its Initiative Against Sexual Trafficking (iast.net/) run antitrafficking programs and deal with issues of sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.

You Are Never Alone (geocities.com/yanahouse/) is a Baltimore-based recovery safe house for women leaving prostitution.

Prostitution Research and Education (prostitutionresearch. com) is a good source of general information about the nature and impact of prostitution.

The National Christian Alliance on Prostitution (ncapuk.org), based in the United Kingdom, is a “collaborative network which exists to unite, equip, and empower organizations seeking to offer freedom and change to those involved in prostitution.” A treasure trove of information and practical guidelines for churches and Christians aiming to help prostitutes leave that life behind.

ECPAT International (ecpat.net), “End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes,” is a network of organizations who share the common goal of eliminating the commercial sexual exploitation of children, and provides substantial educational resources.

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for what she’s done. This approach is disastrous. Without laying a solid foundation of identity first, failure is almost a foregone conclusion. DIGNITY deals with this by preventing the women and girls who stay at either of their two transitional houses from having any contact with anyone outside the program for the first 30 days. In this way, they are able to concentrate on getting themselves in order, working on their self-image and on the life skills that will prove critical to preventing recidivism.

Children who have been victimized by prostitution may need additional services. Because their sexual victimization occurred during such a key developmental stage, prostituted youths often need to rediscover what it means to be a child.

Angela’s House, a metro Atlanta haven for young girls who were prostituted, has embraced this premise in their approach to the girls they serve. A group home at a secret location in rural Fulton County, Ga., Angela’s House offers not only

Phoenix for prostitution and solicitation, so the alternative to the program could be two weeks flat time in jail for the first offense and 60 days for the second, so $788 is a deal compared to the loss of wages and time away from work.”

Mitchell adds that completing the class expunges the solicitation charge from the men’s record. “The men who have completed the class say it was worth the cost, and they believe this class should be given to young men in schools.”

Wellspring also used to offer counseling services to johns, but the program was downsized several years ago due to funding shortfalls. In fact, each of these service providers, from Angela’s House to DIGNITY to Wellspring, is fighting an uphill battle. While clients are plentiful, funds and support are sparse. According to the report on Angela’s House published on March 11 of this year in the Atlanta JournalConstitution, on any given day at least a dozen girls are on the waiting list to get into the program. Although DIGNITY’s

comfortable housing to these young people for up to six months, but provides education, therapy, and medical care as well.

Additional family services may also be necessary.

According to Linda Burkle, prostitution can be an intergenerational problem. She says, “One family with whom we worked had the grandmother, the mother, and the daughter all involved in prostitution.”

Service providers also agree that failure to address the demand side of the prostitution equation means long-term failure in the battle against prostitution. DIGNITY provides an 8-hour program for johns (men who pay for sex).The cost of the program is $788 per participant, and it delves into the reality of prostitution: how it destroys families (including their own), communities, and individuals (including themselves); and the ways in which it objectifies and damages women.

Mitchell explains that the cost of the program is high so that the johns take it seriously. “It is a highly concentrated program that hopefully gives them insight into making better choices for themselves.We have mandatory sentencing in

diversion program, which educates women and girls convicted of prostitution, has a 74-percent success rate in helping their clients stay out of prostitution, thousands of women and girls will never benefit from this program simply because it’s not available to them.

Part of the funding pinch, acknowledges Linda Burkle, has to do with the sort of nonprofit work in which they’re involved. “This work is so important,” she says, “but people don’t want to give money to help prostitutes. They’d rather give money to help poor children. What they don’t understand is that when they help prostitutes, they are helping poor children, because the children are deeply impacted by this.”

WWJD? The church’s role

In his book What’s So Amazing About Grace? (Zondervan, 1997), Philip Yancey recounts the story of a young woman seeking help from a counselor as she tries to extract herself from a life of prostitution. The counselor gently asks her if she’s considered going to a local church for help. The young woman looks at the counselor in amazement. “Church?” she

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asked incredulously. “Why would I go there? They’d only make me feel worse about myself.”

Yancey’s anecdote should act as a cautionary tale to churches in all of their dealings with those on the margins of society, but an even greater impetus to reach out to the sexually exploited is found in the life of Jesus Christ himself.

Jesus consistently associated with society’s most “visible” and reviled sinners, and prostitutes were among those outcasts with whom he surrounded himself. In fact, the actions of one woman of ill repute in anointing Christ’s feet with her tears and costly ointment led Jesus to defend her against the condemnation of Simon the Pharisee, who observed the scene with disgust. God incorporated two prostituted women in the mortal lineage of Christ: Tamar and Rahab, whose faith is praised as being comparable to Abraham’s (Hebrews 11).

Condemnation and denigration characterize the lives of

those who are trapped in a life of sexual exploitation—condemnation from society, from the pimps who coerce and abuse them, and from their own wounded hearts. To engage in further marginalization of prostituted persons only worsens their situation—as well as our own, as we ignore Christ’s admonition to reach out to “the least of these.”

If God’s attitude toward prostituted persons is one of love, grace, and acceptance, how can the church offer any less? ■ Laura Coulter’s dual passion for justice and research makes her an invaluable regular contributor to PRISM magazine, for which she has written on the issues of Guantanamo Bay detainees, gender equality in the church, the juvenile justice system, water rights, the hazards of the Christian workplace, and the death penalty. She also wrote the May/June 2007 cover story that encouraged us to engage our faith at the movies.

SOPHIA’S CIRCLE Healing through friendship, sisterhood, faith

BY AMY DURKEE

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what it means to be a woman. It’s not the force-fed religion of my childhood, where the men who were supposed to be my heroes were the ones who molested me. Now I realize God can be Mother God—a part of me!”

For 20 years, Edwina Gateley, a British-born Catholic laywoman, has been offering retreats for formerly prostituted women in recovery, a work that grew out of her experience working with prostituted women on Chicago’s North Side.

In 1983 she established Genesis House, a place of support for women leaving prostitution. Often, the program’s graduates stayed in contact with Gateley, sharing both their triumphs and their struggles. Gateley realized the need for

renda Myers-Powell had been out of prostitution for two months when Edwina Gateley invited her to a retreat for former prostitutes at a convent in Erie, Pa. “We were told we were going to be with the nuns!” she recalls. “I didn’t know what to think.

But what happened was that we found out they were women just like us. They gave us hope for ourselves. We understood how worthy we were.”

Myers-Powell has been attending Gateley’s retreats ever since, and while they’re not always held in convents, she says the core message is always the same. “Every time I go, my spirit grows,” she says. “They’re teaching us more about

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ongoing, holistic recovery. “There are lots of programs for detox, job training, and life skills,” she explains, “but the issue of inner healing isn’t really being addressed. Women get into this because of very deep violence in their past, like molestation and incest. That kind of damage isn’t healed through a typical recovery program.”

It dawned on Gateley that these women never really had vacations—a chance to get away from everything and rest— so she started inviting small groups of women on retreats to the country. Gateley left Genesis House in 2000, and new women are now being brought to the retreats by current members, those who either are employed through official recovery and social service programs or who volunteer as advocates and mentors.

Typically 12-18 women gather on a retreat—some in long-time recovery, some who have been out for five or more years, and a few new recruits who’ve only recently left prostitution. “Those in long-term recovery become mentors for the new girls,” Gateley explains.

Each three-day retreat includes group activities as well as plenty of opportunity for attendees to rest and receive individual counseling. It’s a mix of instruction, playtime, pampering, support, and spiritual renewal.

“It’s the one place where I can be completely me,” explains member Heidi Carlson. “A lot of us are professional women.

We have to shoulder a lot of responsibility. This is the place where we can have our needs met, the one time of the year that’s just ours.”

Myers-Powell says, “At the retreats, we get suggestions and support from each other. We can say to the new sisters, ‘You can make it!’”

Gateley says it’s difficult for most of us to understand how hard it is for an internally wounded woman with very little self-esteem to handle daily life. The ongoing support helps them stay sober and out of prostitution. Carlson agrees, explaining, “This pain is always with you. It dulls over time, but it gets pricked again throughout the year.”

In addition to the retreats, Gateley and her colleague Carolyn Vogt Groves offer ongoing support—through email, letters, phone calls, and face-to-face meetings—for women in recovery. “What we offer is not a client/staff or clinical relationship, but an older sister/younger sister or mother/ daughter relationship.”

Carlson says all the women in the network have serious family-of-origin issues, and Groves and Gateley help fill that gap. “They give us the unconditional love we didn’t get.”

Gateley seems reluctant to call the retreats and year-round support a “program.” In fact, the group doesn’t even have an official name. Some call it Sophia’s Circle, a name which actually refers to the small foundation established by the group of middle-class Christian women who finance the retreats.

Gateley refers to the work in which she’s involved as a sisterhood network—a group of hundreds of women around the country who support each other throughout the year.

Carlson says, “It’s like we’re family.”

This past fall marked a significant step for the sisterhood,

Left: Women on a Sophia’s Circle retreat planting seeds of new life.

Above: Enjoying an outdoor concert during a retreat are Brenda Myers-Powell (center, waving) and Heidi Carlson (right, clapping).

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when the women in recovery held their first retreat for their benefactors. The idea came from the recovering women themselves; they wanted to give back to those who’d made their retreats possible. Gateley describes the donors’ retreat as a storytelling weekend, where four women—a former escort girl, an ex-stripper, an ex-massage worker, and a former streetwalker—opened up to a bunch of church ladies from the suburbs. “It was a weekend filled with hugging, crying, holding hands, and simply sitting together. These middle-class women offered a holding place for all their pain and they became sisters.” The women who were once anonymous donors and prayer supporters have now been absorbed into the network. They’re emailing and calling each other, offering mutual support. “Women who wouldn’t otherwise have met have an ongoing connection now!”

Gateley exclaims.

“I don’t know whether these women would have made it without these retreats. A three- to six-month day program is not enough. Prostitution demands a lifetime of recovery.

Women who’ve been out for 20 years still have flashbacks, acute distress, and grief. They’ve lost so much. Their wounds continue.”

The retreats have helped hundreds of women stay in touch with each other. Because so many of the women have no other functional family, the network becomes family for them. Carlson says this experience of being loved and validated helps the women in the network to help others.

“Everybody in the network reaches back,” she says. ■ (Learn more about Sophia’s Circle at edwinagateley.com.)

Amy Durkee is a freelance writer in Rochester, N.Y.

PROSTITUTION: PAT H WAY TO I N C A R C E R AT I O N F O R A M E R I C A N F E M A L E S

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BY LISA L. THOMPSON

pproximately 10 miles to the northeast of Philadelphia’s city center is Riverside Correctional Facility. The compound of buildings surrounded by high fences topped with barbed wire is the temporary residence of Philadelphia’s arrested and detained females. Here women are incarcerated while they wait to have their cases brought to trial or for sentencing proceedings. Riverside opened in 2004 and was originally designed to accommodate 768 inmates. Today, more than 900 women are behinds its walls.

The fact that Riverside is overpopulated just three years after its opening is indicative of a troubling trend in America’s criminal justice system: A record high 103,000 females are

incarcerated in the nation’s state and federal prisons. Studies show that female incarceration is growing at more than twice the rate of men (3.4 percent as opposed to 1.3 percent).

Moreover, from 1995 to 2005, the number of women behind bars jumped approximately 50 percent.

Researchers attribute much of this increase to the “war on drugs,” known also as the “war on women.” According to researchers, “In the past decade, arrests of women for drug offenses and other assaults have replaced fraud and disorderly conduct as the most common offenses for which adult women are arrested.” Other factors contributing to the rise of female incarceration are mandatory sentencing for specific

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recent prostitution studies, the lowest percentage of women sexually abused as children is 33.3 percent with a high of 84 percent.“Using a conservative national figure of 17 percent, the prevalence in prostitution samples is thus three to five times that of the general population,” writes Raphael.

In addition, Raphael describes other factors contributing to prostitution, including drug abuse in the home while growing up; early drug usage (marijuana and alcohol at mean ages of 8 and 10, and by age 12 cocaine and heroin); a deceased mother; separation, divorce or death of father; incarcerated parents; domestic violence in the home; mother or close relative in prostitution; coercion into prostitution by family members; incest; and, disruption of economic stability.

The St. Petersburg Times’ account of Melissa in the article “Girl Next Door” (by Lane DeGregory, October 19, 2003)

kinds of offenses, sentencing guidelines including mandatory minimums that were developed to deal with male offenders but which are also applied to women, as well as re-arrest of women for technical parole violations (such as failing a drug test) but not arrest for new crimes.

The increase of drug-related arrests of women notwithstanding, prostitution is the major gateway crime to women’s entry into other forms of illicit activities. For instance, contrary to prevailing opinion, a 2001 study by Maureen Norton-Hawk found that “On the street these young women encounter drug addicts and dealers who encourage and facilitate addiction.

They learn the values and behaviors associated with the drug culture. It is in this context that the women are introduced to heroin and crack cocaine and soon become addicted.” Moreover, “johns” were found to encourage drug use and value the

“Because” by Lisette (formerly incarcerated at Riverside Correctional Facility in Philadelphia) Just because I have a past doesn’t mean I don’t deserve a future.

Just because no one says they love me doesn’t mean I should love myself any less.

Just because I’m in prison doesn’t mean I am not free.

Just because I feel ugly doesn’t mean I’m not beautiful.

Just because people talk about me and say bad things doesn’t mean you have to believe them.

Just because God won’t change my circumstances doesn’t mean he hasn’t changed me.

provides a classic, albeit tragic, illustration of how the risk factors described by Raphael combine to form a magnetic force pulling women and girls into prostitution. In 2003 Melissa was 23 years old and had been arrested for prostitution 17 times since her 18th birthday. Melissa’s father died before she started school; her mother remarried, then developed leukemia and later breast cancer. When Melissa was 11 her stepfather began sexually abusing her; her mother divorced him a couple of years later. No longer able to cope with her illness, mounting medical bills, and the care of her three children, Melissa’s mother committed suicide. Melissa ended up living with an aunt in New Jersey for a while, but was later thrown out. She was using drugs and in prostitution by age 15. In October 2003 she was the second-most-arrested prostituted woman in St. Petersburg and was facing a 10year prison sentence because her previous arrests had increased her charges to felonies.

Yet, when one considers the losses and abuses of Melissa’s

women based on their ability to locate drug dealers.

Norton-Hawk also noted, “Customers prefer the women to be high because paying prostitutes in drugs for service is less expensive and because the woman is easier to manipulate when she is stoned.” This same study reported that in 1997 40,500 females were arrested for prostitution or commercialized vice in the United States and found that in a sample of 50 women arrested for prostitution-related offenses, 64 percent had been arrested five or more times. A Milwaukee study which excluded women arrested only for prostitution, found that almost everyone had at least one arrest for prostitution as well. Such findings suggest that understanding the pathways to prostitution and prostitution’s impact on females is necessary to curbing the rise in the female inmate population.

In her book, Listening to Olivia:Violence, Poverty, and Prostitution (Northeastern University Press, 2004), Jody Raphael details the significant factors that lead women and girls into prostitution. Chief among them is childhood sexual assault. In 20

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formative years, it is difficult to view her as simply a delinquent or criminal nuisance. The brutal toll of prostitution on women who get caught up in the vicious cycle of drug abuse and sex abuse/prostitution becomes readily apparent when one sees their faces. The arrest photos of prostituted women featured throughout these pages challenge popular myths about prostitution: that it is a job like any other; that the women and girls in prostitution enjoy the sex; that there are no victims in prostitution; that the women and girls in prostitution are individuals in control of their sexual identities and destinies.

Through both Listening to Olivia and looking at the faces of the women on these pages, the grim realities of prostitution

are revealed—realities shared by untold numbers of other women currently incarcerated in American jails. Unless more programs—particularly faith-based outreaches—are developed to help females exit prostitution, America’s population of female inmates will likely continue to rise at alarming rates.

Ignoring prostitution and its significant role in the entry of women into the criminal justice system will ensure that prostitution will continue not as the world’s “oldest profession” but as its oldest exploitation. ■ Lisa L. Thompson is liaison for the Abolition of Sexual Trafficking for the Salvation Army National Headquarters (salvationarmyusa. org/trafficking).

TRAFFIC STOPPER What does sex trafficking have to do with prostitution?

PRISM asked Lisa L. Thompson, liaison for abolition of sexual trafficking for the Salvation Army’s National Headquarters, to talk with Donna M. Hughes, a leading international researcher on sex trafficking who has worked with victims of rape, sex abuse, and prostitution. A professor of women’s studies at the University of Rhode Island, Hughes is frequently consulted by government and nongovernmental organizations on policy related to women’s human rights and has testified before the U.S. House International Relations Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

form of sex trafficking, and others think there is a large difference between prostitution and sex trafficking. Those who think we should work very hard to distinguish between prostitution and sex trafficking usually support legalization of prostitution and feel that prostitution can be a legitimate form of work for women, and therefore they are invested in seeing them as very distinct. Other groups view prostitution as harmful de facto, and, looking at what happens to women before they get into prostitution, they consider a large portion of the women in prostitution to also be victims of sex trafficking.

Lisa Thompson: Would you explain what sex trafficking is and its relationship to prostitution?

Donna Hughes: The definitions we have for sex trafficking only came into existence in 2000, so we’ve only been using them for seven years. In the U.S. sex trafficking was defined in the Trafficking Victims’ Protection Act, and internationally it was defined in the UN protocol against trafficking that accompanies the convention against transnational organized crime. Some people consider all prostitution as a

LT: In your efforts to fight sex trafficking, what have you found to be the most discouraging or the biggest obstacles to ending trafficking and assisting the victims?

DH: One thing is the acceptance of treating women as objects that can be used for sexual exploitation. Even in parts of the world such as the U.S. and other Western countries where women and girls have greater rights, there has been an increase in sexual exploitation being considered acceptable as long as the woman/girl “consents” to it. Another thing that

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Donna M. Hughes expose what is really happening to females in prostitution.

We’re starting to see more cases brought against traffickers and pimps in the U.S., and when the public reads about these in the local newspaper and hears about the real brutality that women and girls were subjected to, they start changing their attitudes and stop believing all the “specialists” they’ve seen on TV who have been handpicked by the sex industry to say that prostitution is really all right.

works strongly against trying to assist victims is corruption. I think that most sex trafficking wouldn’t continue to exist if it weren’t for the complicity of police or officials or people who have a vested interest in the trafficking continuing.

LT: Have you seen any signs of progress since you started anti-sex trafficking work in the late ’80s?

DH: We really are on the cusp of a lot of change in attitudes and understanding about what sex trafficking is and really how much of prostitution is also sex trafficking. A number of movies and news stories have raised people’s awareness about trafficking, but a lot of it was focused on trafficking overseas, and it’s just been in the last few years that people are realizing that this happens in their towns as well. Many people are horrified that something like modernday slavery could be happening right around them, how harmful prostitution can be, and how much of prostitution is sex trafficking as well. I still get a lot of calls from people saying they want to do something about sex trafficking, but when I direct them towards places where they might encounter women in prostitution, they say, “Oh no, I want to work on trafficking.” It usually takes a while to explain the situation to them, and sometimes I’m not sure how convinced they are that if they want to fight trafficking they need to try to reach out to women in prostitution.

LT: As a feminist, you ventured outside your peer group to work a great deal with faith-based groups, particularly Christian groups and individuals.What have those experiences been like?

DH: It’s really been very positive. As I said before, a lot of people in academia have taken the position that sex work can be empowering, that it’s liberating and all the things that come with a combination of postmodernism and sexual liberalism.

But I have seen the sexual violence and the trauma that is done to victims, and my position has not always been very popular. In fact it’s been downright unpopular among a lot of people in the field that I’m in and among a lot of feminists.

Therefore it’s been really rewarding for me to find out that there are people in faith-based groups who really understand the harm that is being done to women.While we’re challenging stereotypes here, I think there are a lot of stereotypes out there of what Christian women and men are like and what it is they support in their organizations.

It’s been rewarding for me to find out that there are people in faith-based groups who really understand the harm that is being done to women.

LT: Why do you think people have so much trouble understanding that?

DH: Well, because the media has consistently told us that prostitution is a choice. The film Pretty Woman portrayed a woman who was in prostitution voluntarily; she called all the shots and she met a wealthy Prince Charming and married him. The impact this movie has had on women in the U.S. is remarkable. I remember one student in my class telling me, “Oh, I thought that movie was so great...I watched it over and over again and used to walk around just fantasizing about being a prostitute.” Clearly she did not understand what being a prostitute meant! That film was also popular in Eastern Europe about the time that a lot of women were starting to move out of the former Soviet Union. They thought it could happen to them—if they could just get to a Western country, even if they had to be in prostitution for a while, they would find a rich, loving husband that way. It really has contributed to so much misinformation about prostitution.

Even a lot of academic writing coming out of the universities proposes that sex work can be empowering. But I think we’re slowly starting to break down those myths and

LT: What’s one thing you’d like all Christians to know in terms of the work you’re doing?

DH: I think that what they’re doing is absolutely on the right track and that they should not be convinced to be ‘nonjudgmental’—which is to say they shouldn’t allow themselves to be persuaded to support the women and girls where they find them and not be working to get them out of prostitution. I think that criticism against faith-based groups caused some of them to withdraw, but if you’re going to stop harm that’s being done you have to fight for the victims.Therefore I would encourage them in lots of ways to return to some of the advocacy they did in previous times. ■

PRISM 2007

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